Mobile network traffic has been growing at a very fast pace. In addition, the variation of network end points, the variation of applications, and the variation of mobility states of user equipment devices (“UE”) (e.g., whether or not a UE is moving, and if so, how fast) are growing, and this trend will likely continue.
In the current state of the art, different radio technologies, such as WI-FI and cellular, utilize different management and control mechanisms, and the same is true even within Third Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”) cellular technologies. Current cellular mobility management treats all network end points as equal. This management approach works for existing device types, including, for example, smart devices such as smart phones, tablets, and the like.
The traditional approach of cellular mobility management that treats all network end points the same will no longer work cost effectively in the new paradigm where billions of Internet of Things (“IoT”) and machine-to-machine (“M2M”) end points exist and most of these devices never move. The evolution to 5G networks will embrace a mosaic of radio access technologies (“RATs”). For this reason, a better, simpler, and more cost-effective mobility management approach is needed that can also take into account the device type.
The session management procedures utilized in cellular networks today add significant and unnecessary complexity to the lower protocol layer stacks in both devices and networks, and also to the session concept between the device application layer and an Internet application at the upper protocol layers. In particular, additional data session connections between a device and a packet data network (“PDN”) gateway (“P-GW”) within a cellular network involve complex connection-oriented control procedures (e.g., 3GPP non-access stratum (“NAS”) and general packet radio service (“GPRS”) tunneling protocol (“GTP”) control (“GTP-C”) procedures and complex user plane tunneling protocols within the cellular network (e.g., GTP-U and/or generic routing encapsulation (“GRE”) tunneling).